Currently available digital video recorder (DVR) devices allow a user to record television broadcasts to a hard drive-based digital storage medium. DVR devices have brought the concept of time shifting to television watchers, as users can watch shows they record when their own time permits, rather than being required to watch shows at the time when they are broadcasted. DVR devices are limited to a certain amount of hard drive space, so accordingly, the capacity of DVR devices limits the number of television shows the DVR device can record. Subsequently, DVR users frequently find themselves deleting files (representing episodes) that they have already viewed.
Additionally many DVR devices have the ability to record categories of shows rather than individual shows only. When a user selects such an option, they typically specify a genre of movie sometimes with other subcategories that further refine the show or movie type. Once the user selects the category, they may have the option to define how many shows to keep within that category. This option's purpose is to record shows that the user is likely to enjoy, but that the user may not have been aware of and thus probably would not have recorded individually. The problem, however, is that in using this broad option, the DVR can continually record shows that the user does not want to watch.
Thus, there is a need for an improved system and methodology for enabling a user to generate metrics for, and maintain a record of, watched or partially watched DVR programs and to use such metrics in decisions regarding the selection of the recording of a future shows.